Before Cataclysm launched, yes I did think it was a good game. The story was engaging, the NPC's were present without being omnipresent, progression happened at a steady but worthwhile pace. Dungeons were also engaging though with Wrath the power escalation made earlier stuff zergable which was a problem. To add, though raiding was end game it was possible to get into it without hand holding and the catchup mechanic worked well later on.
Then Cata hit and you could tell the devs got lazy. Whole swaths of content were cut or unfinished, Storylines weren't making sense, player engagement tanked with the NPC's becoming the sole focus, progression was less about enjoying what was there to following the breadcrumbs. The dungeons were a poorly handled mess, originally set to be "more difficult" than Wrath, ended up being cases where minor mistakes resulting in wipes and progression slowing to a near halt, then the "troll dungeons" which were converted raids with the same systems but less stats thrown out which made for a real mess when players couldn't cope with stuff that was meant for raids. Finally the last batch of dungeons were put out and with a couple of exceptions boiled down to "sit and shoot" style of gameplay which has become standard. Raids were much in the same boat, alternating from "blink and you die" to "the devastating attack can be slept through" without rhyme or reason. A lot of these issues remained in Mists as well and then the devs saw numbers start to nosedive.
This brings us to Warlords who's initial announcement read as a desperation effort by the lazy devs and the development showed. If you watched the initial announcement and wrote down what was announced to a list, then went over the list with a red pen for everything revoked and writing stuff that was removed, you would have a lot of red on that page. There was a lot more removed from the game than what was added and what little was added was at best slapped in. Garrisons were a joke and nearly everything in the game relied on them and outside of new raids there was really nothing added to the game. The sickest joke about it was that the Devs said flying was going to be removed to get people out into the world while doing absolutely nothing to encourage it. Probably the biggest insult was the price point. The expansion which had the most gutted from the game and the least added to it commanded a higher price tag, to the point of a standalone game. Most of the players that caused the upswing to the 12 million mark were there for nostalgia (which most of the marketing was centering on) and it showed because after the nostalgia shininess wore off people realized that there was less to the game than before and left.
The mass exodus resulted in what is to this day the biggest crash in sub numbers the game has ever showed with numbers at levels before Burning Crusade was released. Originally dismissed by the devs as being cyclical (aka you'll come back, you always do), is now of as great concern if not larger as the nosedive before warlords. Which brings us to the Legion announcement. Made months before intended and shortly after the announcement that Warlords qualified as the worst expansion in the games history, the announcement was pure pandering, announcing content that the players have been requesting for years and wrapped up in a "BC nostalgia" bow, even to the point where the story is almost a hybrid of Burning Crusade and Warlords. Unlike with Warlords however, most players are wondering what will actually be in the game as opposed to what's been announced.
So yes, at one point World of Warcraft was a good game, but lazy efforts and desperation have made it a shell of what it was.
